Sarcastic Gamer writes: "Another month, another console war prediction from the Webush Morgan analyst Michael Patcher. Over the past year, Patcher has been giving his predictions on the Console War and gaining notoriety within the gaming community. For the last two months, Patcher has been beating the PS3 drum, extolling to anyone that will listen that the PS3 would beat the 360 in sales in March and April, especially in light of GTA IV’s release. He’s been wrong. In fact, before GTA’s release, he predicted that PS3 sales would cause over 2 million units sold against only 1 million due to GTA alone. Wrong again."

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Character and Game Mode details taken and translated from Dengeki and Famitsu articles:

2 new characters not playable in the arcade and new Modes will be added to the PS2 version of Sengoku Basara X (cross) releasing on 6/26 in Japan.

Date Masamune’s assist "Katakura Kojuurou", and Toyotomi Hideyoshi’s assist "Takenaka Hanbei" will now be fully playable characters.

Character Details:
Katakura Koujuurou - Depending on his stance, he can move forward and back quickly, baiting and countering opponent’s attacks. He has fast forward charging special moves with overhead or lower attacks, plus options to cross the opponent up afterwards. A fast moving character giving the opponent no time to think.

Takenaka Hanbei - He has special counter moves that he can do WHILE being hit by the opponent. He also has special moves that will dodge and attack at the same time, making him a specialist in punishing opponent’s whiff animation. This is also a character that will focus on multi-hit combos.

Game Modes: There is now Normal and Easy Command Mode options for game play, which allows you to do special moves just by hitting a button in Easy Command Mode.

The standard Arcade, VS, Challenge, Training, and Gallery Modes are also included.

The opening will have the same song from the arcade by T.M. Revolution. The opening animation will be done by the famous Studio 4C (Memories, Spriggan, Animatrix etc.)

This game is produced by Arc System Works and being released by Capcom. Goes on sale 6/26 in Japan for 6290 yen for Regular Edition, and 8390 yen for Limited Edition. Limited Editon will come with 94 illustrated post cards in special box and a character voice CD.

Editor’s Note: Game pics attached. For the original Japanese Dengeki and Famitsu articles, just hit the according links.

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VGChartz reports that their estimated numbers for Japanese hardware and software chart for week ending May 10th, 2008 was as follows:

Total Hardware: [Last Week #]

PSP: 75,710 (-21%) [96,324]
Wii: 72,366 (+3%) [70,108]
DSL: 51,010 (+3%) [49,764]
PS3: 8,223 (-24%) [10,800]
PS2: 7,876 (-15%) [9,232]
360: 1,534 (-22%) [1,970]

Top 10 Software:

1 Mario Kart Wii (Wii) 109,180 1,198,297
2 Monster Hunter Freedom 2nd G (PSP) 82,446 2,110,896
3 Wii Fit (Wii) 55,933 2,035,259
4 Link no Bowgun Training (Wii) 49,292 142,814
5 Meccha Taiko no Tatsujin DS Nanatsu no Shima no Daibouken (DS) 30,752 119,182
6 Pokemon Ranger: Batonnage (DS) 26,311 520,692
7 Wii Sports (Wii) 19,734 3,021,192
8 Mario Kart DS (DS) 18,418 3,197,082
9 Deca Sporta (Wii) 16,868 185,204
10 Hajimete no Wii (Wii) 15,379 2,396

Software Totals:

DSL: 323,413 (-23%) Tie Ratio: 4.29
Wii: 318,561 (-26%) Tie Ratio: 3.44
PSP: 123,207 (-29%) Tie Ratio: 1.93
PS2: 53,978 (-23%) Tie Ratio: 5.65
PS3: 35,979 (-28%) Tie Ratio: 2.48
360: 8,309 (-35%) Tie Ratio: 4.47

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Arstechnica writes: "Microsoft isn’t doing itself any favors when it crows about its US and worldwide sales of the Xbox 360 and then claims that it doesn’t count the Wii as a competitor. The fact is, the industry may like to massage its own ego by making distinctions between the Wii and the 360 or PS3, but these things are all competing for the same consumer dollar."

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Phil Meza reports: "Star Wars The Force Unleashed, LucasArts’ first current-gen adventure in the post - Hayden Christensen saga, has been slowly lifting its curtain over the past few months as we’ve gotten word on a release date and more. The Wii version’s Duel Mode has been getting its fair shar of press lately, and the PSP/DS’s wi-fi play is sure to notice soon; but the multiplayer component for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 versions (which was confirmed nearly a year ago), has been on media blackout."

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Sony just announced its 2008 and early 2009 PLAYSTATION 3 software line-up. Via press release, Sony’s Scott Steinberg says:

For the second half of 2008 and beyond, we will see a spectacular line up of triple-A titles and original gaming content that will satisfy PlayStation fans across the board… Highly anticipated games such as Resistance 2(TM), LittleBigPlanet(TM), and Killzone(TM) 2, along with original content such as SIREN: Blood Curse and PixelJunk(TM) Eden, demonstrate SCEA’s passion to lead the market by continuing to deliver unique gaming content and revolutionary sequels to our best-selling franchises.

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Los Angeles-based High Impact Games are the folks behind Ratchet & Clank: Size Matters for PSP/PS2 - and the upcoming Secret Agent Clank for PSP - and Gamasutra chats in-depth to design director Lesley Matheson on the PSP, game engines, and the LA dev scene.

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Bruce Everiss, a veteran marketer for Codemasters, writes:

"Sony’s full year financial results, for the period ending March 31st, 2008 make interesting reading. During this period they sold 13.73 million Playstation 2s and 9.24 million Playstation 3s. This, possibly, tells us some or all of the following.

* The Playstation 2 to 3 transition has not been the bloodbath that the PSX to PS2 transition was.

* Publishers who desert platforms early in the transition lose out.

* HDTV is maybe not yet such a critical USP.

* The PS3 is still far too expensive for a lot of people.

* Current generation consoles, the Xbox 360 and PS3, are eventually going to be a lot bigger than people think when eventually all these people upgrade.

* There is more to the games industry than Europe, America and Japan. A lot of these PS2 sales will be in less developed economies.

* Presuming that the whole PS2 operation is now vastly profitable the PS3 losses are a lot worse than they look as they are being subsidised by the PS2.

* Maybe the PS3 catalogue of games doesn’t yet contain enough system sellers.

To look at this from the publishing side we have Electronic Arts’ figures for the same period. They show PS2 revenue at $601million against PS3 revenue of $284 million. So more than double. And I wonder how accurately all of this was predicted by the analysts."

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Matt Peckham of PC World gives his anaysis of what the April NPD report means. He covers both the hardware and software sales for all consoles and handhelds.

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Sony Computer Entertainment announced tonight that U.S. Studios Senior Vice President of SCE Shuhei Yoshida has been promoted to President of SCE Worldwide Studios, effective tomorrow.

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